


tell them we're never coming back

by crickets



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-11 19:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crickets/pseuds/crickets





	tell them we're never coming back

_At first?_

There's this urgency. Panic, almost. But then that all just fades away until he can't shake the feeling that he's forgetting something.

_He is._

-

The barn is basically a white void of endless hallways, and no amount of calling Audrey's name does him any good. He loses his voice and he can't stop thinking about how fucking cold it is in here, how hungry he is, and he wonders if he's just gonna to starve to death because he's some kind of anomaly in this place that was never meant for him. Duke curls up against a sturdy wall, hands around his empty stomach, and tries desperately to make himself fall asleep.

Even that early on, it feels like it's been a _very_ long time.

_Weeks?_

_Maybe it has been,_ he thinks. And then, _Maybe it's a bad idea to fall asleep._

-

When he wakes up he's in the Grey Gull, only he's not because he doesn't exactly remember the deck of the Gull falling off into a void of white. At first he's afraid if he opens the door and steps out onto the deck that all of the oxygen will be sucked out of his lungs, or he'll be eaten by a sand monster (way too much Beetlejuice as a kid, apparently), or something truly _fucked up_ will happen.

But then he thinks, _What the hell?_

-

He climbs the stairs and finds Audrey curled up on her couch, or at least a couch that looks very much like hers. The slow and steady rise and fall of her chest tells him she's fine. Just asleep. He's afraid to wake her up... because, _god_? What if she doesn't remember him when she opens her eyes? What if she's already somebody new and all of her memories are just.... _gone?_

He's never been inside a magical-slash-evil barn before.

It's not like he knows how they work.

-

It isn't long until his aching stomach has him leaving Audrey to sleep and heading back downstairs. He figures if he's got a stocked kitchen, he might as well put it to good use while he still can. He's in front of the grill when she pads in. Her face is sleepy and she peers around him. "I thought I smelled bacon," she says, like it's just another Sunday morning at the Gull.

Duke examines her face, holding out his spatula as if it's some kind of protective barrier between them.

"What's your name?" he asks.

Her mouth falls into a grin. " _Duke_ ," she says to him, a tone of are-you-for-real? in her voice.

He lets out a breath and reaches for her. "Close enough."

Audrey laughs.

-

"Why did you..." Audrey's voice trails off. "I mean. Why are you here?"

"Don't." Duke says, and he's not mad, because he made this choice, but even he can hear a bitterness in his voice. It's not about being with her now, though. It's just that he finds it absurd that she would even have to ask. "You know why."

"Okay," Audrey says, and scoots a little closer to him on the couch where they've sat for the last few hours trying to piece things together. Trying to figure out how this works. (And a positively unacceptable amount of time trying to close their eyes and wish they were somewhere else and then opening them again to see if it worked. It never did.) "Well at least let me say thank you."

Duke waves a hand.

"No, I mean it," she says. "Because, for whatever reason, I'm still me. And... I don't know if that has anything to do with you being here or not but... I think it just might. And because of that, I get to be Audrey Parker still. For a little while."

-

They fall asleep like that, curled close together on the couch.

And nothing changes.

Or maybe it does and they just don't know it yet.

-

Audrey starts counting breakfasts. She was sure she had a calendar in her apartment but she can't find it anywhere, and it's not like any of their phones work. Her laptop certainly doesn't. But her watch tells her what time of day it is, and as long as the battery doesn't go dead, and as long as she doesn't forget to mark another tally in her notebook each morning after they eat, they can figure out how long they've been trapped here.

"Sixty breakfasts," she tells him one day.

"That's a month isn't it?" Duke looks at his fingers, as if counting them.

Audrey narrows her eyes. "Try two months, dingbat." And even though she's laughing, for the first time she realizes that something is not quite right here.

"Right," Duke says slowly, and in a way that sends chills down her spine. "Two months."

-

It's after breakfast seventy-five that Audrey brings Duke to her bed.

They've finally decided to throw blankets over the windows without shades both upstairs and downstairs to keep the light out, make things a little less stark, and Audrey nudges up against him in the kitchen when they're securing the last one, laughing about something idiotic he's said, and then his hands are on her and he's tickling and saying, "Oh, you think that's funny, do you?" And then his lips are on hers and his hands grip her waist tighter than in the playful moment before and Audrey can feel her nipples harden when his fingers slip underneath the fabric of the sweater she's wearing and she pulls back and takes his hand in hers.

"Upstairs," she breathes into his lips.

Duke grins.

-

They begin to have the same conversations over and over again and neither of them has yet to notice. Nor does either of them question why the food never runs out.

They simply forget to wonder.

-

She traces circles over his bare stomach.

"How did we get here?" she asks. It isn't the first time. It won't be the last. "How did _you_ get here?"

"It was an accident," Duke says, pushing her hair behind her ear, his finger sliding to her chin so he can look at her. "I can't really remember. Do you?"

"No," Audrey whispers, closes her eyes. "I can't."

-

They forget a little more each day. And on some days one of them might not remember anything at all.

One night Duke bakes a cake, and Audrey smiles and takes huge bites and asks for ice cream and laughs when he tells jokes.

But when she looks at him?

_She has no idea who he is._

Later, she'll remember everything. They always do. The both of them. She remembers sitting there across from him at the bar, the terrible lop-sided cake that he was so proud of, his smile, and the horrible sensation of simply _not knowing_. So she wakes him up while he sleeps and kisses him hard and pushes his hair back so she can get a good look at his face and memorize it.

"What?" Duke whispers, his voice hot on her lips.

Audrey pulls her tank over her head. "Don't talk," she says. And she closes her eyes and guides his hands to her, memorizing all of this as well.

-

"Were you here before me?"

A beat. "I feel like I've always been here."

"I don't."

"What do you think that means?"

"Does it have to? Mean anything, I mean."

"Maybe not. But what if it does?"

"So many questions."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

"But..."

"Okay. Say it means something. Does it change anything? Really?"

"It has to. Doesn't it?"

"I don't know..."

"I'm sorry."

" _It's okay_."

"Duke..." she says his name suddenly, tears in her eyes, and in that moment she's back, and he's back. She shudders with the weight of it and he holds her close and she begs, "don't let me forget." And he makes empty promises because it's all he can do, and Audrey secretly hates him for it because she knows that there's nothing he can do to stop it. Not one thing. And maybe she'll fall asleep hating him and wake up not knowing who he is. Or maybe she'll fall asleep loving him and _he'll_ wake up not knowing who _she_ is.

And it happens.

It all happens.

Over and over until she wants the darkness to come and not go back again.

She always remembers afterward. The forgetting. And somehow that's the hardest part. So maybe if the part of her that remembers, the part of her that hurts, could just stop coming back... Maybe.

 _Maybe_.

That would be better.

-

Audrey remembers one day in the galley, chopping vegetables.

_The knife slips._

Duke is at her side but she can't remember his name and all she sees is the knife on the counter and blood on both their hands and she runs, out of the gull, into the white. She hears him calling after her, a name she doesn't recognize, and she keeps running.

What she doesn't remember is how she got back, or what Duke said to her when she returned.

Sometimes she thinks that maybe she just dreamed it. But when Duke pulls her hand to his lips, kisses the deep scar across her palm, she knows it was no dream.

-

"How did we get here?"

The question.

"It was an accident," one of them answers. "Wasn't it?"'

The other, uncertain, "was it?"

"I can't remember. Can you?"

"No," the reply. "I can't."

_-fin_


End file.
